I'm Back!!!

[MiniDave]

Did you miss me? Did you even notice I was absent?   

5 days ago we had a T-storm blow thru that was pretty devastating, Don only got power back at his house late Sunday afternoon, trees down, power lines down......it looked like a war zone.

I have kept up with my tree maintenance so I only lost some small branches and some little dead stuff - my back yard neighbor on the other hand.......well, lets just say he doesn't.

So, when the 90+ mph winds came thru it took down one of his trees and a bunch of branches, right into the power lines.....our power went on and off about 8 times, then came back on and stayed on.

Our google fiber however, did not fare so well, as the fire that started from the branches lying on the power lines migrated down to the fiber cable and set the insulation on fire. So long after the power lines quit arcing (they were still burning their way thru a 4" thick branch tho) the fiber cable insulation kept on burning too. It started towards one end of our yard and over night burned all the way down to the other end and right up to the pole. The fire dept was out here about 4 times that day and night but said just to leave it alone until the power company could come out and turn off the power.

The next morning it was still burning and in the daylight I could tell that the power wires had sprung back up, so I got out the garden hose and gave it a quick spurt where it was still burning in about three places. That put the fire out but the damage was done.

We called Google fiber and they said they were "on it", but nothing seemed to be happening. My wife was going thru withdrawals so in the interests of family peace I got on the phone with Google yesterday and after talking to 5 different people as I worked my way up thru their hierarchy I finally got to someone who could actually get something done. 

This morning a young tech showed up, climbed up to the tap, took one good look at it, climbed down and took his ladder back out to his truck. About 20 min later an *ahem* older gentleman (turned out it was his dad!) came over and they decided to run me a temporary line from where it was still working, till they could get a crew out and replace the whole cable that was burned up.

So, we're back online at least!

Here are a couple of pics and a link to a vid I took when it first caught fire, the "space noises" it makes are the insulation burning and dripping down onto the grass.

Of course, right as they were making the splices in the temp cable, another T-Storm blasted thru, so I stood over first one then the other with an umbrella while they worked - I didn't want them to give up in the middle of the job - tho I doubt they would have - but man it was really coming down, lightning and thunder blasting all around us.....it was fairly biblical!

So, that's my excitement for the week!

Once Don got power back on he could finish up putting the engine together and into his GT6, and yesterday he got it started! Sounds sweet too! Unfortunately he has to stop for a week and go see a terminally ill life-long friend in Oregon who's just entered hospice.

I'm moving forward - slowly - with my hot rod project, I'm hopeful that I'll at least have the welding done by October, then I can start cutting it up to build the rear subframe and get the engine installed.....but that's a whole nother story!

If you look closely at the bundle of leaves to the left of the fire, you can see little sparkles of fire in there too - that branch was still "live" and being burned thru by the power lines. Once it burned thru completely the next day it fell into the yard and the power lines sprang back up and quit arcing and spitting!


More as it happens

[cstudep]

Heard you guys maybe got nailed down there. Glad to hear you came out of it mostly unscathed. We got nailed up here a couple weeks ago, had a recorded wind speed of 98MPH.

The tree damage was 10x worse up here than it was when a tornado went through several years ago. Bro-in-law has a mini excavator so we spent 5 days doing clean up in the town near us for people who needed it. I stopped counting after 20 loads up to the dump area in my dump trailer, guessing we easily ran 30-40 loads and loading with a mini ex we had it packed in as much as we could per load. Of course the second day the town was filled with people charging ridiculous amounts of money to clean peoples stuff up, hook electricity up etc.. Not much I dislike more than people who take advantage of people in situations like that.

My parents have a rental house in the town that had a huge Hackberry tree uproot and tumble over onto it. Had to have a crane come in and lift it off the house, crane operator said it weighed 49,500 lbs. It was the largest one they had ever lifted in one piece. It's sitting on the ground now but I still need to cut it up and haul it off.

[Willie_B]

I remember that noise from lighting the green plastic soldiers on fire when the plastic dropped off.

[94touring]

Last month we had 90+ mph winds downtown here.  Blew one of my windows out even.  Pic of rear of property.

[MiniDave]

Yesterday the power company came thru and hacked at the neighbor's trees to clear them out of the wires, that's all fine and good but all they did was cut and left the mess right where it was, much of which fell into my yard. I also saw this morning where my crab apple tree has a major branch bent down to the ground and half broken....I don't know if that happened because others fell on it or it just broke, but now I have yet another big branch to cut up and get hauled off.

Not to mention all the stuff the power company cut that fell into my yard......I think I'm just going to throw all that right back over the fence and add it to his piles, since it's all his trees anyhow.....

I like to use one of those big Vermeer mulchers - those make short work of stuff like this! But I have no use for the mulch, or any place to put it.

[MiniDave]

I spent all day today cleaning up storm damage and I'm still not done.....over night one of the large branches on my crab apple tree gave out, so I had to clean all that up too. I thought the city was going to do a storm damage cleanup and pickup the piles of dead trees all over the neighborhood, but they said no....just hire a tree crew to come get it.

Screw that! We have regular pickup of yard waste so I'm just going to feed it to them two barrels and 2 bags worth each week.

I also decided not to clean up my back yard neighbor's stuff that fell into my yard....he can't be bothered to trim his trees and bushes, and it was his trees that got into the power lines and caused the fire - they grow into my yard and over the fence - so when the power company came thru yesterday and cut out all of his trees that were up in the power lines they just left the cuttings......so I threw the ones that fell in my yard on top of their pile too!

I still have some more to do, I'm going to go along the fence line with my chainsaw and cut everything down that's over the fence. All that's going into his yard too.